Out Steps Tichenor

While one publisher was pulling in his horns last week another, hitherto not widely famed, was looming on the horizon of U. S. magazine publishing. The advancing figure was that of gruff-voiced Frank Aloysius Tichenor, publisher of Aero Digest and Sportsman Pilot. Last week found him in control of a strange new collection: The Spur, Plumbers' & Heating Contractors' Trade Journal, The Port, Outlook & Independent.

Publisher Tichenor undertook expansion at the instance of his oldtime friend, wealthy Frederick Stanhope Peck of Providence, R. I., State Commissioner of Finance and Republican National Committeeman. Mr. Peck and the New England banking house of Bodell & Co. were heavy stockholders in Angus Co., publishers of Spur, which ceased to pay dividends last year. Together with Publisher Tichenor, already a small stockholder, they secured control, vested it in him.

Besides Spur, fortnightly for horsey socialites, Angus Co. published Plumbers' & Heating Contractors' Trade Journal, Nation's Schools, Modern Hospital. The last two Publisher Tichenor promptly sold back to their former owner. Then he scooped up The Port, a little-known monthly published by the Port of New York Authority. He plans to build it into a shipping men's review of port news the world over.

While he was busy slashing overhead in Spur's spacious Madison Avenue offices (he began by making the magazine a monthly), Publisher Tichenor was telephoned by a friend that Outlook & Independent, which suspended publication in April, was that day to be auctioned by a bankruptcy referee. Funk & Wagnalls were bidding $2,000 for it, planning only to use its subscription list for the Literary Digest. A faithful admirer of the late Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote for Outlook in its heyday, Publisher Tichenor bustled downtown to court, determined to see old Outlook kept alive. He sent the bidding skyward, got the magazine for $12,500, announced that it would resume publication in September if not earlier.

Frank Aloysius Tichenor is much more believable as publisher of Outlook than as publisher of Spur. Rough-&-ready, earthy, amazingly energetic, simple in his tastes, his interests lie far afield from Spur's studied elegance. He is a natural and practiced politician. Now a Republican, he is convinced that the time is nearly ripe for a Third Party, sees an opportunity to rebuild Outlook's influence to what it was in Roosevelt's day.

Born in Gethsemane, Ky., Publisher Tichenor attended Villanova College (from which he subsequently got an honorary LL.D. for his friend Mr. Peck). He arrived in Manhattan 25 years ago with $4.40 in his pockets, talked himself into a job with a commercial photographer.

As publisher of Aero Digest (acquired 1922) he has bitterly attacked what he thought was graft, sham, inefficiency, stupidity in the aeronautics industry and in Government functions affecting aviation. All but fanatical on the subject of national defense, he preached the gospel of Col. William ("Billy") Mitchell. Last year he hired Major General James Edmond Fechet, retired head of the Army Air Corps, as "national defense editor" of Aero Digest. In his editorial column "Air--Hot & Otherwise" Publisher Tichenor consistently baits Senator Hiram Bingham, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the National Aeronautic Association, occasionally the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce. He has been known to take a revolver (empty) from a drawer and lay it on his desk while interviewing truculent callers.

He lives at Mamaroneck, New York suburb, with his wife (who was an employe in Eastern Film Co.) and his son, Frank Jr. ("Tich"). He curses lustily, calls all younger males "son" (he is 50), all women employes "lady."

End of a Chapter

Long ago Bernarr Macfadden discovered that while a large audience will listen to lectures on whole-wheat bread, muscle-building and deep breathing, a much larger crowd will attend if the object on display is a nicely rounded female without too many clothes. Also he learned that a sermon on ethics will gain the ears of millions if the text is the parable of the stenographer who lusted for her employer. From these two truisms, aided by a complete lack of good taste, Bernarr Macfadden evolved a magazine publishing formula which made him rich. As years rolled by and millions rolled in, it occurred to him to try applying his formula to a newspaper, in the city where the gumchewing population is largest. In Manhattan in September 1924 appeared his tabloid Evening Graphic, a daily magazine of sexationalism which announced itself a "crusading newspaper," with the motto "Nothing But the Truth."

The Graphic shrieked, screamed, leered, turned its collar around and preached. It introduced "composographs" (faked pictures) of murders and bedroom scenes on the excuse of "acquainting readers with life's realities." It published sexy stories and sex pictures to "help tear down false prudery" and "to demonstrate the benefits of physical culture." Scarcely a newspaper, it earned the name "pornoGraphic" and the contempt of decent journalists. Its circulation hit a peak of 350,000, dropped steadily for the past three years to 237,000.

Last week one of two facts was demonstrated: either Publisher Macfadden's estimate of the Manhattan mob mind was unprofitably low; or the gumchewer field had already been pre-empted by the other tabloids, the Mirror and the thumpingly successful Daily News. For last week Publisher Macfadden threw his Graphic into bankruptcy.

The Graphic employed 400 men & women. Last week it was being published, from day to day pending appointment of a receiver or discovery of a purchaser.

Two days before the Graphic's bankruptcy another Macfadden paper, the New Haven Times, was sold for $10,000 to the neighboring Journal-Courier, which promptly junked it. In Michigan two other obscure Macfadden sheets, the Lansing Capital News and Greenville News, were expected to be disposed of momentarily. Some time ago Macfadden sold another pair of Michigan smalltown sheets. (None of these five was a tabloid, none bore the Macfadden fleshpot hallmark.) Remaining in his hands are the only Macfadden papers which have ever made money:* Automotive Daily News, Investment Daily News, Philadelphia tabloid Daily News.

Publisher Macfadden is supposed to have sunk $7,000,000 into the Graphic--a figure which coincides with the approximate total of libel suits filed against it. (The libel suits were disposed of at a total cost of $5,290.) Three years ago Publisher Macfadden told Editor & Publisher: "It will make a few hundred thousand next year." But it never did. The only feature which ever gave promise of building and holding circulation for the Graphic--Walter Winchell's gossip colyum--was bought away by the Mirror.

Few months ago Publisher Macfadden tried a new tack. He took personal charge, essayed a comparative clean-up of the sheet, hired a Harvard man as manager. Also, because he was feeling more than ever the drain upon his purse, he called upon his employes to take a pay cut by buying stock (TIME, June 20). But it was too late.

Of the Graphic's $760,500 liabilities, 3,700 is owed to Macfadden Publications Inc. for loans and materials.

After several weeks of probity, the Graphic reverted last week to type in what looked like its final week-end edition. As tailpiece to an affronting chapter in U. S. journalism, on the front of the rotogravure section was the picture of a film actress with a robe slipping from her shoulders and thighs. Beneath her was a caption for a story on an inside page: SEX MYSTERIES REVEALED.

* Except the Detroit Daily, traded to Patterson & McCormick as part payment for Liberty.

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